We're
remodeling this section, so please bear with us.
There are some great new and old bargains to be found
here, and there will be plenty more as we progress, so
after you've given this page the once over, don't forget
to check back in a bit.

The Best American Comics 2006
edited by Harvey Pekar and Anne Elizabeth Moore
This volume marks the first time that comics joins the well
established "Best American Series." It is a surprisingly
well produced book -- surprising in that it's from Houghton
Mifflin, a major NY publisher, whose eyes are usually more
closely set on the bottom line -- that contains a good cross-section
of work published in North America in 2004 and 2005 and
functions as a fine follow-up -- as a yearbook does to an
encyclopedia (for those of you old enough to know what we're
talking about) -- to both McSweeney's
#13 -- which is clearly its inspiration -- and
the just-released Brunetti edited anthology reviewed
above. This collection spans the generations, including
new work from old-timers Kim Deitch, Gilbert Shelton and
Robert Crumb, middle-agers Jaime Hernandez, Lynda Barry and
Joe Sacco, and youngins' Anders Nilsen, Rebecca Dart and Jesse
Reklaw, whose story, "13 Cats of My Childhood," we singled out
for praise in our 2005
SPX report, when it appeared in it's original form as Couch Tag #2, stating at
the time, "It is one of the best comics at this year's SPX...
and deserving of a much wider audience than it will be able to
find in this form." So, suffice it to say that we're
quite happy to see it included here in this anthology. By far the longest piece included
in this 320 page anthology, practically a graphic novella, "La Rubia Loca," by Justin Hall
-- another SPX attending self-publisher -- is an
engrossing story about a bunch of hippie slackers stuck on a
bus tour through Mexico with a crazy woman. And keep in
mind that these are just the highlights, there's plenty
more. 2006
•
full color • hardcover • 320 pagesretail price - $22.00
copacetic ¡SALE!
price - $8.88

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

Life of the PartyThe Complete
Autobiographical Collectionby Mary FleenerOne of the best
collections of autobiographical comics -- or "autobiographix,"
as she calls them -- Life
of the Partypresents cartoonist Mary
Fleener's crazy life of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll is all
grist for the mill in this series of "autobiographix," as she
calls them—strips based on her own life that have appeared in
such anthologies as Wimmen's,
Weirdo, Rip Off Review, and Snarf, and, especially, her own title, Slutburger. Growing up
in the alcohol-soaked, tiki-decorated world of her parents'
suburban Los Angeles, and then living on her own through a
progression of loud-mouthed boyfriends, gay and straight pals
of both genders, and untenable roommates, Fleener takes
last-minute band gigs in dyke bars, is visited by ghosts,
picks up after other people's sexual misadventures, and brews
her own kitty stew to feed her cat. Her high-contrast drawing
is augmented by her unique "cubismo" style: whenever
characters are in agitated mental states, or their spiritual
selves are interacting on some astral plane, Fleener expresses
the effects in emotive geometric abstractions that would've
tickled Picasso's funny bone. This is a one of a kind
collection. Recommended! SORRY, WE HAVE EXHAUSTED
OUR SALE COPIES ON THIS. We do still have a very few
copies of this out-of-print-classic remaining...retail price -
$14.95 - copacetic price
- $14.95

Houseboundby Rick GearyThough he is better
known now as the creator of a series of Victorian murder
mysteries, back in the day Rick Geary was (more or less) the
Richard Brautigan of comics. He pioneered the genre of
short, off-kilter stories that, by virtue of their peculiar
slant on the events they portray, continue to provide readers
with fresh perspectives on the mundane. The stories
contained in Housebound are, on average, over twenty
years old, but they are as unique now as they were when he
first laid Rapidiograph pen to paper. Quirky, entertaining and
fun, this book is a one of a kind treasure (well, truthfully,
it is one of two -- the companion volume, At Home with
Rick Geary -- is every bit as wonderful, but is, sadly,
long out of print and tough to find), and now it's a bargain
to boot!retail price -
$11.95 copacetic ¡SALE!
price - SOLD OUT

Love and Rockets, Volume 1:Music for Mechanicsby Gilbert, Jaime & Mario
HernandezIt all starts here!
The dawning of a new era of comics begins when Gilbert Hernandez
lays to rest the old in his timeless masterpiece of meta-comics,
"BEM." This ingenious novella reveals the insidious trap
of genre comics, which leaves its protagonists -- and, by
extension, its readership as well -- stuck in a vicious cycle of
call and response that never ends... "¡BEM!" This volume also features the first
appearances of counter culture super-stars, Maggie and Hopey,
and the first visit to Palomar as well. 'Nuff said,
indeed. These are the comics that changed comics
forever. This Volume -- along with, we hasten to add,
every other Love and Rockets volume as well -- belongs in the
collection of every self-respecting comics reader.To learn more about Love and
Rockets, read our intro.also available at this same
swell price: Volumes
4, 5, 6, 9 & 15 -- while
supplies last!retail price -
$18.95
copacetic ¡SALE!
price - SOLD OUT

B.
Krigstein Comicsby Bernie KrigsteinOK,
you know who you are: you saw this deluxe, full color,
oversize hardcover book when it came out a few years back, you
picked it up, you looked it over, you sighed and then you put
it back on the shelf, saying to yourself, "Yeah, it's a great
book all right, but I can't afford to spend $50 right
now." Well, in this case at least, it turns out that
time is on your side. Bernard Krigstein
(1919-1990) is routinely listed among the great comic book
pioneers of the 20th century, and yet, with the exception of
his EC Comics period, most of his work has been unavailable
since its original publication. This retrospective collection
presents 34 key stories in color from every stage in
Krigstein's five-decade career, many of them reproduced from
the artist's own originals to reveal details and subtleties
that couldn't be reproduced or were altered editorially in
their comic book printing. Fourteen of the stories, uncolored
in the originals, have been recolored by Marie Severin. This
volume is a revelation even for those who thought they knew
Krigstein's work, and now it can be yours for 40% off its original
price! retail
price - $49.95 copacetic ¡SALE!
price - SOLD OUT!

DRAWN & QUARTERLY PUBLICATIONS

No Love Lostby Ariel Bordeaux
The tangled relationships of twenty-somethings in Seattle is
the crux of this 56-page squarebound comic, but it's all in
the details and there's plenty of those here; and, from the
woman's point of view, no less. This is a work that has
generally been overlooked. Don't pass it by this time!
retail price $6.95 - copacetic
¡SALE! price
- $2.95

Portraits from Life(copacetic favorite)
by David Collier
This book presents the strongest of David Collier's work and
is one of our perennial best-sellers here at Copacetic.
It is filled with extremely engaging stories of the lives of minor, obscure and
offbeat Canadian figures. Some of these are full fledged
biographies, such as the fascinating account of Humphrey
Osmond, the Canadian scientist who was an early researcher
into psychotropic drugs and reputedly coined the term
"psychedelic." Then there's the life story of Ethel
Catherwood, the Olympic high jumper known as the Saskatchewan
Lily, who ended up infamous and reclusive. A more
tightly focused tale is that of "Grey Owl," an enigmatic
British man who managed to convince those he came into contact
with in the Canadian north that he was a North American
Indian. The acme of the collection is the tale of David
Midgaard, a Saskatchewan man arrested as a teenager and
imprisoned for decades for a rape and murder he didn't
commit. This is a gripping tale told in the inimitable
Collier fashion, wherein he weaves his own life into the tale
of another, and so really makes it hit home hard. The
stories in this volume were key to pioneering the comics
journalism movement. They amply illustrate why the most
notable of the new comics journalists, Joe Sacco once said, "I
don't think there's a cartoonist whose every new work I
approach with such anticipation as David Collier."retail price - $12.95
- copacetic ¡SALE!
price - $8.88

Hamilton Sketchbook
by David Collier This is a great
bedside companion book. In it, long suffering Canadian
comics artist, David Collier shares his life in a trailblazing
hybrid of words and images, primarily in the form of journal
entries and sketches. This is among the most intimate
forms of expression and pushes the McCloudian definition of
comics into the realm of artists' sketchbooks. It is a
relaxing and enjoyable read, full of interesting anecdotes,
witty observations and self-deprecating humor, and, of course,
great pen and ink sketches of life as it is lived today in
Canada.
retail price - $14.95 - copacetic ¡SALE!
price - $7.77

Waiting for
Food: More Restaurant Placemat Drawings #3by
R.
CrumbhardcoverHere it is, the third
collection of R. Crumb's acclaimed restaurant placemat
drawings -- for less! As Crumb himself states in his
forward, the originals of many of these grease stained, food
splattered drawings have sold in galleries for thousands of
dollars. Who would've thunk it?Allow this collection to inspire
you and your friends, loved ones and relatives to make more
constructive use of that time between ordering and eating!retail price - $26.95- copacetic ¡SALE!
price - $12.95

The Summer of Loveby Debbie DrechslerThe Summer of Love
is a poignant rite-of-passage graphic novel that lays
bare -- in pen and ink on paper -- one soul as it
navigates the roiling waters of the transition from girl to
woman, revealing the angst, lust, love and confusion produced
by
the raging hormones of adolescence. The entire book
is beautifully printed in two colors: a flat olive and a
light mahogany, that work together serve to provide a unique
reading experience -- no black ink anywhere! Peggy
Orenstein, the author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self
Esteem, and the Confidence Gap, has this to say:
"Debbie Drechsler's is one of the most authentic, profound
voices of female culture in any medium. Summer of
Love perfectly captures the daily anxieties and mundane
traumas of coming of age in the suburbs."144 pages • two-colorretail price -
$16.95 - copacetic ¡SALE!
price - $6.95The Extended Dream of Mr. Dby MaxThe title has it
right: This is an extended (or perhaps extensive would
have been better) dream. It is an adventure story, but
it is an adventure that could only take place in a dream. The
narratvie really captures the ineffability of dream world
dream logic, where one place transfroms into another and
suddenly you become someone else and they become yet another
and you keep trying to figure out what's going on but before
you can things have changed yet again... Anything and
everything goes here, yet it all connects somehow and the
dreamer's very soul is at stake. The sumptuous art and
surreal story perfectly complement one another in this truly
far out tale by the Spanish cartoonist, Max. retail price - $12.95
- copacetic ¡SALE!
price- $4.95

TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

Magic Boy &
the Robot Elfby Jamaes KochalkaThis edition
represents Kochlka's first graphic novel (more like a novella,
really) in a new and improved, french-flapped, two-tone
edition that is slightly reworked and adds an all-new ending
that "brings the story to a stunning psychedelic climax."88 pagesretail price - $9.95copacetic saleprice
- $3.95

Hey, Mister: The Fall Collectionby Pete
Sickman-Garner You
want funny? Look no further: This book will
make you laugh. Like Peter Bagge's Hate, but
smarter and more brutal in its judgments on this dysfunctional
society of ours, and with a distinctive flavor all its own,
this is a comic for people who see past the façade as a matter
of course. Hey,
Mister takes sarcasm to new heights. It makes
us think of the Monty Python episode, the "Piranha Brothers,"
in which a fearful and trembling thug played by Michael Palin
relates how Doug Piranha was the most terrifying gangster he
had ever encountered because of the deft manner in which, "he
used... sarcasm." And the bitterness, oh, the bitterness! The Fall Collection is the Guernica of bitterness. This
volume is without doubt the best (and, sadly, the last; at
least to date) Hey, Mister collection.
Work-a-day America has never been stripped so completely naked
as in these pages.retail price - $12.95copacetic saleprice
- $6.95

Top Shelf Under the Big Top (#8)
Brett takes it to the next level with this
one. A big 176 pages, including 16 pages in full color
by the Israeli comics collective, Actus Tragicus , and lots of
duo-tone, Top Shelf Under the Big Top ranges far and
wide. Highlights include a 32-page multi-part epic
comic-within-a-comic by Josh Simmons, "Operation Blue Dream"
by Mack White and "Standard Deviation" by Jeff Johnson.
There's also more early work by Craig Thompson, Dylan
Williams, Jeff Levine, Marc Bell, Dean Haspiel, Matt
Madden and more!2000 • 176 pages • B & W, duo-tone
& full colorretail price - $14.95 copacetic saleprice
- $7.77

Servants of the Mapby Andrea BarretthardcoverThis is an engrossing
and fascinating collection of linked stories that link --
albeit in an oblique and unexpected fashion -- not only to
each other but, in a round about way, to her novel, Voyage of the Narwhal and
her novella, Ship Fever
as well. Andrea Barrett is the most consistently
engaging writer of fiction that centers on the history of
scientific themes -- usually science that is itself related in
some way to that most historical branch of science
evolution: paleontology, genetics, etc. These brand new
copies of the original hardcover edition of her latest work
are a great value. retail - $24.95 • copacetic
price - $8.88

Out of Sheer Rageby
Geoff
DyerhardcoverThis
is
a one of a kind book that, if it must be categorized, might
be considered as being related to the hyper-self-aware
literary genre now often associated with the McSweeney’s
crowd, but written a bit earlier, and possessing a distinct
British flavour. Originally published in England in
1997, it is, first and foremost, a book about
writing a book, about D.H. Lawrence, that is also a literary
biography, of D.H. Lawrence, as well as a book of literary
criticism, focused on the writings of D.H. Lawrence, which
includes a criticism of D.H. Lawrence’s literary
criticism. Parts of it serve as a travelogue, in the
tradition of D.H. Lawrence’s travel writings, and also --
but I think you get the idea: it's a book that can't
seem to get around to doing what it's supposed to be doing
yet is constantly at work rationalizing that this inability
is actually a blessing in disguise. In other words,
it's an ode to procrastination. Amazingly, it’s also a
real page turner, the kind of book that's hard to put
down. AND: it's funny. It also
sports one of the cleverest book jackets of all time.
Need we say more?
retail price - $24.95copacetic price
- $12.95

Kafka
AmericanaBy Jonathan Lethem
and Carter ScholzOfficial hype: "Previously
published only in a signed, limited edition, Kafka Americana
has achieved cult status. In this act of literary
appropriation that is by turns witty, affectionate, and
shameless, the author of Motherless Brooklyn and the
co-author of Palimpsests seize a helpless Kafka by
the lapels and thrust him into the cultural wreckage of
20th-century America. In one of five tales, Hollywood
welcomes Kafka as scriptwriter for Frank Capra's It's a
Wonderful Life, with appropriately morbid results. "The
Amount to Carry" transports the legal secretary of the
Workman's Accident Insurance Institute to a conference with
fellow insurance executives Wallace Stevens and Charles
Ives, to muse on what can and can't be insured. "K for Fake"
brings together Orson Welles, Jerry Lewis, and Rod Serling
in a kangaroo trial in which Kafka faces fraudulent charges.
Taking modernism's presiding genius for a joyride, the
authors portray an absurd, ominous world that Kafka might
have invented but could never have survived. "retail price -
$11.00 copacetic price -
$3.95

Next up: three
(now four!) classics by the master American prose stylist.

In the Penny Arcadeby
Steven
Millhauser
This collection of works from the early 1980s by Millhauser
starts off with August Eschenburg, a prototypical
tale which serves as the template for several later
Millhauser works, most notably Martin Dressler (see
below). The middle section is composed of three
stylistically linked forays into the classic short story
mode, each of which stages an elaborate wedding of location
with season to produce an exquisite evocation of an exact
yet unnameable emotion, and each of which manages to pull it
off. The stories that will really having you reaching
for the champagne to celebrate their success, however, are
the three that close out the volume, and most especially the
titular tale, In the Penny Arcade. This story
reacheds the summit where so many others have fallen short
in capturing that oh-so-elusive scene in which childhood
ends. It distills this instant in an essence that is
as momentous as it is bittersweet. This story is
bracketed by a pair of equally successful distillations,
first of childhood, and the other of tradition. This
book is a treasure.
import softcover
copacetic price - $3.95

Little Kingdoms
by Stephen Millhauser
The lead story in this collection of three novellas by
America's reigning master of the form, "The Little Kingdom of
J. Franklin Payne" is an amazing tour de force for which the life and work of
Winsor McCay serves as a springboard into a hallucinatory trip
inside the mind of a powerful and obsessive creativity. We
believe that this work stands to be especially appreciated by
comics aficionados, and as we just secured a large quantity of
the UK edition at a special price (and as the US edition is now, while not,
technically, out of print, available only in a print-on-demand
edition) we felt it was appropriate to bring it to our
customers' attention at this time. The two additional
novellas that fill out this volume are every bit as original,
unique and intense: "The Princecss, the Dwarf and the
Dungeon" is a magnificent deconstruction of the fairy tale
that reveals its origins and functions -- social as well as
psychological; and "Catalogue of the Exhibition: The Art of
Edmund Moorash (1810 - 1846)" is one of the most singular
works in the annals of fiction -- a turbulently romantic tale
presented in the form of, as the title has it, the catalogue
for an exhibition of paintings. Recommended!copacetic price
- $4.95

Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamerby
Steven
Millhauser
This Pulitzer Prize winning novel represents the apotheosis
of Millhauser’s obsession with obsessives. In the
character of Martin Dressler, Millhauser has found a
character that fulfills both his personal needs as a writer
and the novel’s needs for justification. Dressler
serves as a synecdoche for both the American Way and the
American Dream, or, perhaps, more properly, how these two
overlap and even, at times -- such as during the 1990s, when
this novel appeared, merge into an organic whole in which
each are indistinguishable from one another.
Millhauser’s inimitable style carries the reader through the
life-cycle of Dressler’s dream of life that seems so real
that at times its hard to believe that it’s only a dream;
but then, the best of dreams are always like that, aren’t
they?
Import softcover
copacetic price - $4.95

and,
his latest work in hardcover... for less!The King in the Tree: 3
Novellas
by Steven MillhauserhardcoverThree novellas by the greatest living master of the
form. A tale of love and betrayal unfolds on a private
home tour in "Revenge," while both "An Adventure of Don Juan"
and the title novella transform classic fables into wholly
original works as only Millhauser can. The latest work
by America's champion prose stylist... for less!
retail price - $23.00
copacetic price - $4.95

The
Wishbonesby Tom Perrottahardcover
We still have a few brand new hardcover copies of this well
received novel of 1997 available at a
low, low price. This novel presents
characters and dilemmas that are vaguely similar to that of
Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (which was published two
years earlier) -- rock-guy(s) being dragged kicking and
screaming into adulthood -- but on this side of
the Atlantic (New Jersey, to be exact) and playing in a
bar-band-turned-wedding-band (the titular Wishbones) rather
than working in a record/CD store. The Wishbones are
not as cool as the High Fidelity folks, but they're
every bit as well defined and delineated. There's a
bit more wish-fulfillment fantasy going on here as
well (as the title/band-name broadly hints at).
On top of this (or maybe, beneath it) the book works hard to
de-mythologize the "rock life," showing how it's
mostly just another job -- albeit one much more
accommodating to fantasy. Sort of like comics.
Eminently worth a read, if its sounds up your alley.retail price -
$22.95 copacetic price -
$4.95

Brightness Falls
from the Airsoftcoverby James Tiptree, Jr.
The lastnovel by one of the brightest lisghts in the history
of science fiction . retail - $9.95 • copacetic
price - $4.95 READ JAMES TIPTREE, JR.!

Winner of the National Book Award
by Jincy Willetthardcover A tale of Gothic
horror disguised as a wicked black comedy, this, the first
novel by long suffering woman of wit, Jincy Willet, is one of
the most readable books in recent memory and is a real winner
(although not of the National Book Award). It tells the
tale of two sisters who represent opposite poles in the
approach to living -- one, a sensualist who yields to all
temptation and biological drives, the other, an ascetic who
lives a life of the mind through books and self-restraint --
who then become involved in a love triangle with the same man,
a man "with the face of a Nazi and the eyes of a Jew."
Clearly, this is a book rife with conflicts, inner, outer and
otherwise, yet it nevertheless manages to be an extremely
entertaining read. Recommended.retail price - $24.95
• copacetic price
- $4.95

Laurie Andersonby RoseLee Goldberg
(Abrams 2000)
The definitive retrospective monograph on Laurie Anderson,
this exhaustively researched volume documents her entire
career, from the seventies through the end of the 20th
century. Here's a chance to learn how much more there is
to her art than just simply her music, great as that is.
oversize hardcoverretail price:
$39.95 copacetic price - $14.95

Hypermental:
Catalogue of the Exhibition
Now out of print, and previously offered by us at the full
price of $40.00, this is that rarity: an engaging,
intellectually stimulating, thought provoking exhibition
catalogue that discusses a new framework in which to group and
view late 20th century art. Briefly, the show's curators
take the position that art's role has shifted from
mediating nature, to mediating media, in as much as the
reality that we currently occupy is more defined by media than
by nature. oversize
softcoverretail price:
$40.00 copacetic price - $10.00